The Art of Thriving instead of Surviving

While I have many other photography based blogs to write, I thought this the most pertinent to publish at this time.

Stress is running high in the population when it comes to the new operating conditions we find ourselves in. Understand that we humans have the tendency to survive, because there have been all kinds of real and imagined catastrophes in the recent and distant past and as a civilization we have persevered, as well we will this one.

You might, however, need to participate in good active and proactive measures to ensure you and your loved ones survival.

Take personal responsibility for your own health

You’re probably aware what you should be doing, but may not be doing it.  If you know you should be doing it, do it.  If you don’t know what you should be doing, here are some of the things that I know about that extend health and extend the vibrancy of life while you’re living it.

• Exercise

I’ve never really been a morning person, so the idea of getting a workout in at 5am ahead of my normal get the kids to school and work my workday has never really worked out for me.  This change of normally scheduled programming is giving me the chance to start some fresh habits that benefit my aging body and by doing so, help to insulate me from the harm of any contagion because my body is ready for the fight, if it comes to my door.

Back in 2008 I accomplished the completion of the P90X workout program which was 6 days a week of intense 60-90 minute workouts for 90 days straight. Twice, all on 7am workouts.  At that time I was working out in my studio and I lived upstairs from my studio, so getting to work was only a change to the hat I was wearing, not needing to fit my workout in the schedule down to the minute.  Excuses, I know.

During that time, I was on active advertising shoots for the United States Marine Corps and found my exercise regimen beneficial when I was literally running through the woods of Quantico with three camera bodies and 7 lenses, keeping ahead of the recruits as they made it to their next training event. Even the drill instructors were moderately impressed.

I very much enjoyed having the strength to carry Speedotron packs at even arms-length without issue.

A petrified pigeon poop removal event above my gorgeous tongue & groove mahogany ceilings in our above-the-studio loft lead to a separated shoulder and an end to my 3rd run at P90X only three weeks into it the following year.

My job at CI isn’t nearly as physical as some of my freelance photography was, or even my darker days of working ‘unskilled labor’ while also teaching yoga.  At 50 years of age now, I’m weaker than I was at 40, but am looking to change that now with the modified work schedule allotted to us through this pandemic.

Right now, I’m doing intense cardiovascular workouts, some of them including the philosophy of ‘running from the bear’, literally going all out for as long as I can and stopping whenever I can no longer keep that up.  I feel great, I mean, really great.

There’s benefit to plodding along at a regular and continuous jog, but that hasn’t ever really been my game.  I created a custom program on my machine of choice and at the levels I set, made it through 30 minutes with my heart rate running between 140 & 155 after the initial warming up.   Once the pollen in Atlanta abates a bit, I have a glorious hill around the corner that is a decent challenge to sprint up without stopping.

• Meditation

Dr Joe Dispenza has a great idea that I’ll have to paraphrase, that meditation at the very least gives you a break from being yourself.  He has written the books, You Are the Placebo, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, and Evolve Your Brain. I’ve been aware of him for at least the last ten years and recently watched a new series on the Gaia network, Rewired, that I cannot recommend enough as he describes the latest findings in neuroscience and how we can literally create a new ‘you’ through the practice of undoing the portion of ourselves that does not help the greater being, the subconscious routines that drive 95% of our life.

(original video link disappeared at some point, this is a different video from a different production)

On the inspiration of reacquainting myself with his work, a couple months ago I restarted a daily meditation practice.  Practicing Yoga in the evenings is often a moving meditation for me, because when you’re at the heart of evolving your practice to be that next .04% better than you were the day before, you are mindless with no room for chattering monkeys or repetitive thoughts to intrude upon your calmness within the fire within the storm of exerting muscular proficiency in the many difficult-to-master yoga forms.

Meditation otherwise in the evening for me 7/10 times puts me to sleep.  Often, I use the practice of meditation to go to sleep while in bed when cyclical thoughts are otherwise keeping me awake.  I generally run on the philosophy that, at worst I’ll fall asleep and get the rest I need, even better, actively mediate before getting that next level of rest.

My daily practice until this current disruption had been to sit in my car for 15-30 minutes after dropping the kids and school but before walking into work.  I found my days to consistently go much easier when I started that way, as it would undo any stress that had accumulated through having to Drill Sargent the kids to eat their breakfast, be dressed & ready to drive, as well as whatever Atlanta traffic surprises were in my path.  (Comon people, a left turn signal before it’s self evident that you’re going to stop that lane can save so much time and frustration for the people in back of you.  Thank you.)

There is a great iPhone app called ‘Balance’ that is a near endless series of terrific guided meditation for beginning to intermediate meditators and as many apps do, provides some structure and time tracking so that any of you ‘gamers’ that like to raise your stats, can fall into a good habit while the program also caters specifically to you by periodically asking you question about your prior meditation.

Meditation is not only good for the clearing of your mind, but the reset also involves the quieting of you autonomic nervous system, bringing you down from the flight or fight response that many of us have accepted as our normal condition, and down into a place where you body can actually rest & heal when sleep isn’t involved.

Better than sleep actually, because the calm state can last well into your working day when many wake up from sleep with anxiety about past or present and that can stick with them for the waking day.

Meditation invokes the power of living in the present moment, eyes wide open, all mental faculties online to discern and act on whatever is necessary without worry.

Vitamin C

I have long been a proponent of increased Vitamin C intake, far in excess of the recommended daily allowance set inevitably by lobbying groups in D.C.  In the past, when I got to the end of elaborately produced week+ of photography projects and marathon retouching sessions, I would get sick.  The stress would keep me going and producing, but the moment that period ended, I would be flu-like sick for days to weeks after.

The change for me into rarely ever being sick was both understanding the nature of my autonomic nervous system, keeping me in ‘fight or flight’ and not allowing the time for daily incremental healing but also proper nutritional supplementation.

Here’s a great interview illustrating how Vitamin C can help all sorts of health situations:

Dr Gary Gordon – The Oral Chelation Imperative

Here’s a 60-Minutes episode from New Zealand that tells how Vitamin C was likely the life saving miracle cure to a dairy farmer’s advanced pneumonia.

Vitamin C The Miracle Swine Flu Cure – 60 Minutes Living Proof

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is foundational in our total body health and for many of us, work takes us inside and away from sunlight that would normally bolster this value within our physiology, so supplementation is necessary for most of us. Of all the bloodwork analyzed, nobody that was hospitalized for Covid had proper Vitamin D levels in their body.

Even if you are supplementing, there are vast differences in what a manufacturer is allowed to publish on the side of the bottle, what educated healthcare professionals & nutritionists would recommend contemporarily, and what those actual values should be if those professionals knew about the simple mathematical mistake that happened decades ago that under rated what proper supplementation should look like. (in the US 15x too low, in the UK over 22x too low!!) Bottom line, you should be aiming for ~+/-9,000iu/day, depending on your specific body weight, and you should also investigate pairing your Vitamin D supplementation with Vitamin K2.

• Become Superhuman

You’re not going to like this part.  I (didn’t) like this part, but I can’t dis-acknowledge that this is a thing.

For the last several years between 2017 to 2020, I’ve been closing at least 3 showers a week with full cold from the faucet.  My reaction varies from cursing like a sailor to a very Zen approach with my breathing not changing whatsoever, having already started a sequence of rhythmic full inhalation belly breaths to continue into the masochistic cold, where it’s up to me to rotate to keep shocking a new part of my body.

A few times, I get into the shower on full cold.  This is not generally fun, but this morning I did it after my intense workout and it wasn’t bad at all, shocking, but not bad. (a day later, while editing this, I did it again well after my cool-down)  The goal is to be able to get in the cold shower with limited physical preparation, because the survival instinct of your body is to ramp up all of its systems to prevent hypothermia, training your adrenals to perform when called upon in a situation of non mental stress. (Edit 05/28/26 – I haven’t missed a cold shower since starting the every day / no excuses pattern I established in May of 2020. ‘Cold’ water differs vastly from time of year to region of country or certainly within different countries. In a typical Summer in Atlanta, the cold tap flows 70ºF water, in the winter I see 47ºF. I notice the water as being colder, but I do all my washing in the full cold, so for at least a few minutes every time before warming up to hot or just getting out as is.)

I also have a self created logic to wanting to do my initial washing in the cold water. If you’ve ever worked with fiberglass insulation and had some of it penetrate your skin, you’ll know that you are supposed to wash in cold water only so that the strands of glass wash down off your body, not penetrate further when your pores open up to hot water. I feel like this is also an appropriate method of washing the possible contagion of airport funk off my body, not wanting to hot-steam-aerate anything that has settled on my skin that could then inhaled or potentially penetrate but instead wash down the drain. Once I’m good and hot, I’ll typically do a second wash in the hot water but I always start on cold, even at 5am in a cold house on a February morning.

The only times I can inspire a shiver now from the tap water is when I’m actually feeling like my body is fighting something or I’m especially tired. (or in Copenhagen, I haven’t measured the water temp there, but found it damn cold the last time I was there) I don’t run from the shiver, I lean into it, I make sure that some work gets done when I’m already a bit uncomfortable. 9/10 times, I get past the shiver and it stops on its own with my internal core raging with heat to defend from the cold attack.

Wim Hoff is known as ‘The Iceman’ and holds a number of world records including being submerged in ice water for more than two hours without his core body temperature varying.   Through his conditioning process, other people have replicated a number of his feats short of world records, demonstrating that his body isn’t some freak of nature, but that his training creates results that seem impossible at the outset.

I am starting his breathing method today.   Who else is in?

(edit 05/29/26: In the summer of 2020, while the world was in relative chaos, I started this breathing method and prior to doing this, I could probably only hold my breath for up to around 45 seconds. Within two months I was routinely getting to 4 minutes and in that same time had a personal record of nearly 5 1/2 minutes. While I’m well aware of the power of this breath-work, I’ve fallen off the pace and only do it at most a couple times a week, but I’m generally in the 3 1/2 minute range for the 2-3 sessions of it I’ll do in the morning here before work)

Edit 03/13/25 – (have been taking at least 3 minute cold showers every day since I published this article, have not skipped even one day)

• Never stop Learning / Beware of False Prophets

I have been studying in an autodidactic manner for the better part of the last two decades.  In 2012, I had consumed every single TED talk that had been published to that time, mostly running in a window within the palettes of Photoshop while I was retouching projects. In that same period of time I was inventing, secured a couple patents and designed out some physical & software workflows within various categories.

To this day, whenever I’m doing ‘dumb’ labor or driving long distance, basically anything that isn’t active problem solving or verbal based, I have an earbud in and I’m listening to lectures, podcasts, interviews and educational productions to better learn about our world. While I may not be a master of any, I’m decently versed in myriad subjects.

When the news first started up regarding this Coronavirus Pandemic, I was naturally skeptical, knowing that the WHO (World Health Organization) in the past had conflicts of interest in crying wolf, because there were causal links demonstrating the voting board members of that group also sat on boards of major pharmaceutical companies who would profit greatly if millions of government dollars were directed at their companies for the contractural responses already established for Pandemic response. 

In 2009, a quiet redefining of statutory terms allowed a Pandemic alert to be issued for the Swine Flu not because of any excess morbidity or mortality which was necessary within the established definition of the word, but because a computer projection suggested it would happen.  That computer model was created with grants from exactly the industry that benefits from doom predictions and delivering contractural obligations, regardless of any benefit to humans being present. A rudimentary web search will only show the whitewashing of the event, in this country pharma advertising pays for 70% of our ‘news.’  You’re not likely to see the publishing of any of the annual $2 Billion of criminal penalties and fines Big Pharma pays out on the airwaves and in the publications they’re paying for. News content is mostly paid programming without you realizing it.  

That $2B number (not counting NDA’d out of court settlements) represents legal battles won by the injured, not out litigated by the behemoths, and I’m not down with ‘acceptable human harm’ being a line item on an accounting profitability statement. 

Mark Twain is have known to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,’ and this is a profound statement.  By studying the past and seeing how the population was steered into compliance by a threat that was or was not there, we can have a better sense of truth and fiction in real time. (edit: It was the same university / computer scientist with a $16 million grant from the Gates Foundation that predicted the early doom-scale Covid numbers, who believed in his own work so little that he was immediately breaking quarantine in the height of the global fear to have an affair. Bill Gates only after divesting from Covid injection development with $500 million in profit acquiesced by stating that the injections did not ever halt the transmission of the virus. )

Don’t necessarily negate or accept any single piece of information out there, the clearest truth often hides in small spaces, but so do the seeds of disinformation.  Careful what you water.

• Be Prepared

Before the severity of this situation was known, I had the thought that if at the very least, if the scope of this caused people to count on themselves more than the available stock at the store down the street, that they would carefully and procedurally build a small surplus of necessary goods for their family so that in an upcoming event they would be more self sufficient, then not only would they be safe & healthy during whatever problem arose, but the people who do need the help the most have those societal institutions stocked and ready to provide.

When we previously lived in the farm country and we lost power, we had a generator.  Still have that generator, but at that old country house, it didn’t provide enough amps to run the well pump.  Lost power often enough that it made a lot of sense to have at least 20 gallons of fresh water on hand for drinking and if necessary, bathing, and at least that amount again of grey water for flushing toilets.

A couple times in Atlanta we had disruptions to our water service that persisted for more than a day.  You really don’t know how many times you count on water across the day until the tap is dry, so even in this city, in addition to some extra shelf-safe food, I also keep some water in reserve, it’s the thing you need the most of if civilization takes a dump, plus, staying hydrated helps to keep you healthy.

I have whole-house water filtration, but when I’m rotating stock on the stored water reserves, I pull from the pre-treated water tap to make use of the chlorine in the public water supply to help stabilize the stored water.

If things do head south, water filtration is the next thing you’ll need to have, because there may be available water around you, but I wouldn’t drink it unless you want a good bout of the green apple splatters.  I recommend these filters as they can filter bacteria and even viruses and work by gravity feed and without any power necessary.  I’ve got one that can filter 14,000 gallons of water before the filters are toast, upgraded to remove Fluoride from our drinking water as well. (Perhaps the ADA should listen to toxicologists rather than their internal memos regarding the safety and efficacy of public fluoridation, but that’s a whole nuther subject)

• Be Grateful Everyday

Those who are reading this blog entry, we live in a time and place in the world where we likely have had personal, economic and physical struggles, but nothing to the extent that even prior generations in this country have endured, let alone the world as a whole.

I am humbled and grateful every day for my family, friends and co-workers, all of which I know I could trust with my life.  I have cultivated a trusted support network where through give and take, I know that we will all can exist far beyond basic survival, even in the worst of times.

I am grateful for the clients that I can now call friends.

Peace and strength be with each and every one of you.   – BK